Feature: It's not just a London thing...

Agency life is usually associated with working in the London. However, there are now more agencies producing great work with big brands in all corners of the country. Fergus McCallum, our new guest editor and CEO TEQUILA\ Manchester has experience of this and reports on the differences faced when running an agency outside the capital.

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f you work in Manchester at the moment, as I do, it is impossible to get away from the London v The Regions debate. The seemingly stop start commitment of the BBC in moving key departments to London has fuelled arguments for and against the relative strengths of being down south or up north.

The issue has been discussed at length in all of the key media in the North West and it was even the subject of a live debate at one of Manchester’s members clubs earlier this month.

Personally I find the debate amusing, but at the same time frustrating – in a world where geographical and cultural boundaries are disappearing around us it seems incongruous that physical location can still create such pre-conceived misconceptions around the quality of business and talent that exists in London and outside London.

To my mind (and more importantly from experience) agency life in London and outside London is incredibly similar. Across the UK you will find great agencies, with great people, doing great work. The challenges of running those agencies are different from running an Agency in London - but to be honest only slightly different. Sometimes it’s more difficult to recruit good people, sometimes you have to sit and listen to intermediaries say the client just wants a London Agency and sometimes you just have to fight that bit harder to get media coverage for your business. But other than that, the day-to-day business has pretty much the same feel, the same highs and lows, the same personalities, the same pressures.

At TEQUILA\ Manchester we simply don’t believe in the concept of the Regional Agency – we’re a first-tier marketing agency with a real sense of our own personality, and I can say without fear of contradiction that our best people are as good as any you’ll find no matter the location.

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’s a perspective shared by my counterparts at other Agencies and expanded upon in recent conversation with John Morgan at Brahm in Leeds, Kate Fenton from Multiply in Edinburgh, Paul Watson at Momentum in Manchester and James Goddard at the JJ Group in Oxford.

They are each running successful award-winning agencies, and on the whole they don’t see much difference in life outside London other than the fact quality of life itself is better. Their views are a good barometer of life outside London.

Working with big brands

The key themes are clear – you need to be hungrier to keep your new business pipeline full; in the main you need to work harder at getting media coverage for your agency; and the talent is there but you need to look harder to find it. Location is pretty much irrelevant as far as producing great work; if you look at the DNA of a good Agency, it’s the same whether you are inside the M25 or outside the M25.

“It’s a complete nonsense to think that being based outside London we’d just be regional in our outlook and our client base. Handling business is about insight and creativity, as opposed to postcode.” Says Fenton. “We’ve actually seen clients less concerned with where we’re based over the last few years and to be honest we just use technology to make geography irrelevant. “

It’s a view shared by Paul Watson at Momentum – “So long as we see our businesses as agencies that happen to be in the regions and not regional agencies, the future will continue to be rosy. I can pretty much get to any city in Europe quicker than from central London so there's no issue about location and meeting with clients. I know a digital agency based out in the hills of Yorkshire who regularly have Google, Yahoo and Microsoft flying in to see what they're up to. It clearly doesn't matter where they are, it's the quality of what they're doing that brings them attention. “

It is clearly a mistaken belief that to work with big Blue Chip clients you have to be based in London. However it is probably true that you have to work harder at building relationships with intermediaries and be more aggressive with your new business efforts. The same is true when it comes to creating media coverage for your organisation. You just need to work at it and then work at it that bit harder.

As far as TEQUILA\ is concerned we know that there will be fewer briefs that just walk in the door compared to our counterparts in London. But we also know that the quality of work coming through the Agency is as good as you’ll get in London - and we’re doing it for companies that most London agencies would love to get their hands on. And of course we’re not alone in being able to say that ….. so where we can cite Umbro, RBS and NatWest and Chicago Town there are other great examples of big brands doing business outside London and getting great work.

“It’s a real misconception that all blue Chip Clients want a London based Agency and our work with British Gas, Beefeater, Citroen and Lombard hopefully proves this. In fact Clients are increasingly seeing the benefit of receiving the same high calibre of work without paying the fees that are necessary to charge in London. In effect they get big agency benefits without the associated costs” offers Goddard of his experience with the JJ Group.

“Yes there are plenty of clients who just want to use London agencies,” adds John Morgan “but equally, there are plenty more who recognise the talent on their doorstep and want to stay local. Interestingly, our biggest account wins over the last year have been southern-based clients. If you have a track record of working with big brands, it certainly helps overcome any credibility gap. “

Working with Intermediaries

However there is a recognition that getting your share of voice in the new business marketplace is that bit harder.

“This is probably the biggest issue of being based outside of London. “says Watson “I think we have to hunt continuously - business doesn't just knock at our door like it does with the bigger London agencies. So our new business machines needs to be well oiled and capable of a cold call or two.”

And intermediaries don’t seem to have the knowledge of Agencies outside London that perhaps they should.

Goddard’s view is that “there are increasing frustrations amongst leading regional agencies that key intermediaries continue to remain totally London-centric” And to further make the point Paul Watson agrees “They’re London centric. We don’t get lots of recommends because they (wrongly) perceive the regions as a harder sell”

So generally there is a feeling of being underrepresented, but there is also an acknowledgement of the need to make up for the geographical distance by going that extra mile to build better relationships. When questioned on the subject, John Morgan’s response was interesting “Intermediaries? We’re represented poorly in the main, but to be honest we probably don’t help ourselves collectively here or support some of the more enlightened ones. I have a view that most (not all) pay lip service to agencies outside London”.

There’s clearly more we can all do to improve the balance.

Finding the right staff

But it’s the question of talent and recruitment outside London that gets the most response from our Agency Heads – ranging from the benefits of the quality of life, to the positives of local partnerships with Universities and the strong feeling that in general (and this is a national not a regional problem) that the increase in graduates generally is only increasing the number of poor quality graduates.

Having worked in both London and Edinburgh over the past 10 years, Fenton has a clear view on the differences. “I think Agency life in London can feel more fluid and transient simply because the job market opportunities there are much broader and hence staff turnover tends to be higher. That simply can’t be a good thing for the quality and consistency of your product. Multiply has had almost zero staff turnover for the last 4 years which would be a pretty rare thing in London. “

So in the good agencies you’ll find plenty of experienced talent producing great work. But let’s be honest here, there are also agencies and people outside London that don’t have the same drive to compete on a UK platform.

As Watson points out “There are creatives in regional agencies who wouldn't get a job here at Momentum and they'd be out of work in London. Having said that I think the job of a creative in a regional agency is tougher. They don't have the luxuries of time or big budget so the good ones, and, don't get me wrong there are good ones, have to actually be much more creative. “

Recruiting from universities

Then of course there’s the question of the talent of the future which brings out a broad spectrum of views from everyone. On the positive side there’s some great talent coming through our Universities and a willingness to embrace and nurture that talent within the Agency world. However the reality seems to be that there is also a great number of poorly prepared graduates coming through the system right across the country.

“There is a wealth of bright talent coming out of local universities and colleges.” according to Goddard. “We can nurture and continually develop that talent through the Agency’s on-going training programme utilising the likes of the IPA and ISP to raise the standards of professionalism within our industry. In fact Industry Bodies like the IPA and the ISP perform an exceptional role here”